An Appetite for Life, a Passion for Business

Carolyn Pisano Rue ’88 left the business world after 16 years and three children and started volunteering. “Probably too much,” she admits. “But I wanted to do something.” She just wasn’t sure what. It was when Rue and her friend Jackie DeMarco started taking cooking classes an hour away from their Fair Haven, N.J., homes that inspiration struck.

“We realized that there was nothing like this at home,” says Rue. Cooking was already a passion for her. “My husband was my guinea pig. He’s so wonderful. I learned to cook by feeding him. I started having parties just for the fun of it. He finally said, ‘We need to turn this into something a little more lucrative,’ when we were having 100 people over for a cocktail party just so I could cook.”

And so, Taste and Technique Cooking Studio was born. Rue and DeMarco have expanded the studio to include an extensive menu of classes, workshops and parties for adults and children from kindergarten through the teenage years. In addition to their adult and child offerings, Taste and Technique is branching out into corporate entertaining and team-building classes.

The business has grown enough since its inception in 2007 that Rue has stepped out of the kitchen — for the most part — and assumed a managerial role. In the process, she has managed to combine a few key ingredients to create the perfect career for herself. Her economics and political science majors, a minor in education and her extensive experience in student government at Bucknell helped Rue develop confidence as a business owner.

Rue chose Bucknell instinctively during her college search. “I went through the gates and fell in love and thought ‘what am I going to do if I don’t get in?’ It felt so right to me,” she remembers. “I loved the atmosphere and the community that Bucknell has.”

This fall her daughter, Bethany Rue ’15, will follow in her footsteps.

“She is as ’ray ’ray Bucknell as I am,” says Rue. “We fight over who gets to wear the t-shirt.” — Julie Dreese

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